Music-History & Criticism

This gorgeously illustrated deluxe volume shows the full range of Warhol's work for magazines--which will surprise even his most ardent fans--and includes cover art, editorial illustration, and ad work. Beginning with the cover of a 1948 issue of Carnegie Tech's student magazine, Cano, and...

Voodoo, D'Angelo's much-anticipated 2000 release, set the standard for the musical cycle ordained as "neo-soul," a label the singer and songwriter would reject more than a decade later. The album is a product of heightened emotions and fused sensibilities; an amalgam of soul, rock,...

(Music Sales America). This book/audio series provides solos, duets and songs covering four centuries of composers for the guitar and lute family. Taken from original sources, and carefully fingered for the modern player, the transcriptions are as faithful as possible to the original while...

Hold On to Your Dreams is the first biography of the musician and composer Arthur Russell, one of the most important but least known contributors to New York's downtown music scene during the 1970s and 1980s. With the exception of a few dance recordings,...

Vintage presents the paperback edition of the wild and brilliant writings of Lester Bangs--the most outrageous and popular rock critic of the 1970s--edited and with an introduction by the reigning dean of rack critics, Greil Marcus.Author: Lester BangsISBN-10: 0679720456ISBN-13: 9780679720454Publisher: Anchor BooksLanguage: EnglishPublished: 09/12/1988Pages:...

Alongside Richard Hell, Walter Lure is the last surviving member of seminal punk band Johnny Thunders and the Heartbreakers, and the only one who was there for the full stretch. From New York to London and back again, Lure's autobiography unflinchingly explores both the...

Celebrate of the history and significance of both the Fender Telecaster and Stratocaster for the company's 75th anniversary in this combined edition of Dave Hunter's two best-selling books! The Fender Telecaster, created in Les Fender's Fullerton, California, workshop and introduced in 1950, is a...

The Oxford Handbook of Sondheim Studies offers a series of cutting-edge essays on the most important and compelling topics in the growing field of Sondheim Studies. Focusing on broad groups of issues relating to the music and the production of Sondheim works, rather than...

Examines questions raised, in antiquity and now, by mythical narratives about humans transforming into non-human musical beings.Author: Pauline A. LevenISBN-10: 131660263XISBN-13: 9781316602638Publisher: Cambridge University PressLanguage: EnglishPublished: 03/10/2022Pages: 290Format: PaperbackWeight: 0.86lbsSize: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.61d

The inspiration for the Play It Loud exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art The electric guitar has long been an international symbol of freedom, beauty, and rebellion. In Play It Loud, veteran music writers Brad Tolinski and Alan di Perna give us the...

Taking us back to late '70s and early '80s Hollywood--pre-crack, pre-AIDS, pre-Reagan--We Got the Neutron Bomb re-creates word for word the rage, intensity, and anarchic glory of the Los Angeles punk scene, straight from the mouths of the scenesters, zinesters, groupies, filmmakers, and musicians...

Named a Best Book of 2017 by NPR and GQJoining the ranks of the classics Please Kill Me, Our Band Could Be Your Life, and Can't Stop Won't Stop, an intriguing oral history of the post-9/11 decline of the old-guard music industry and rebirth...

Best Damn Hip Hop Writing: The Book of Dart encapsulates one of the defining voices in hip hop music criticism today. Each essay in this collection is written by Dart Adams, a writer whose work has been featured in various leading hip hop publications,...

One evening, journalist Eric Siblin attended a recital of Johann Sebastian Bach's Cello Suites and began an epic quest that would unravel three centuries of intrigue, politics, and passion. Winner of the Mavis Gallant Prize for Nonfiction and the McAuslan First Book Prize, The...

The minstrelsy play, song, and dance "Jump, Jim Crow" did more than enable blackface performers to spread racist stereotypes about Black Americans. This widespread antebellum-era cultural phenomenon was instrumental in normalizing the N-word across several aspects of American life. Material culture, sporting culture, consumer...

If Genesis, according to British comedian and fan, Al Murray 'were the progressive rock band who progressed', then Peter Gabriel, once solo, would be the one who progressed the most. Who would have thought listening to early Genesis would eventually take the listener to...

Examining new genres from the UK and across the Atlantic, including mumble rap, Brooklyn drill, UK drill, trap dancehall and Afrobeats, Neon Screams explores the dystopias and dissociative transcendence offered by this boundary-pushing music. With a foreword by Simon Reynolds, Neon Screams explores the...

Goodbye, Guns N' Roses transports the reader into a mind-altering trip through the colors, scandals, nihilism, and mythology that make Guns N' Roses so much more than another "hair metal" band. A valentine and a breakup letter to one of rock's most controversial bands....

Jesse Saunders story is one of the most important in the history of popular culture period from his Hometown of Chicago, Jesse created the 1st original house music record and launched the House Music movement across the land. Eventually, his style of music would...

A nocturnal journey through local histories of clubbing in Africa and EuropeThe image of the DJ dragging his record case through international "non-places" and deejaying in clubs around the globe is a contemporary clich . But these club scenes have rich, geographically differentiated local...

Sweet Bitter Blues: Washington, DC's Homemade Blues depicts the life and times of harmonica player Phil Wiggins and the unique, vibrant music scene around him, as described by music journalist Frank Matheis. Featuring Wiggins's story, but including information on many musicians, the volume presents...

In 1979, Bruce Pavitt moved to Olympia, WA, and began programming a show called "Subterranean Pop" on local community radio station KAOS-FM. Inspired by Olympia s guide to independent music, "OP Magazine, " Pavitt launched a fanzine version of "Subterranean Pop, " focusing on...

Courtney Love has never been less than notorious. Her intelligence, ambition and appetite for confrontation have made her a target in a music industry still dominated by men. As Kurt Cobain's wife she was derided as an opportunistic groupie; as his widow she is...

Following hard on the explosion of British punk, in 1979 Gang of Four produced post-punk's smartest record, Entertainment For the first time, a band wedded punk's angry energy to funk's propulsive beats--and used that music to put across lyrics that brought a heady mixture...

Frank Sinatra was the greatest entertainer of his age, invigorating American popular song with innovative phrasing and a mastery of drama and emotion. Drawing upon interviews with hundreds of his collaborators as well as with "The Voice" himself, this book chronicles, critiques, and celebrates...

Joe Strummer's untimely death at the age of fifty in December 2002 took from us one of the truly unique voices of modern music. The quintessential Rude Boy, punker, rebel musician, artist and activist, Strummer wrote some of the most important and influential music...

By 1985 Tom Petty had already obtained legendary status. He had fame. He had money. But he was restless, hoping to stretch his artistry beyond the confining format of songs like "The Waiting" and "Refugee." Petty's response to his restlessness was Southern Accents. Initially...

A vital tool in understanding and appreciating jazz -- introducing the key figures, theory, and the controversies that shaped it development -- that explores how it became North America's most popular music in less than fifty years. Often called America's only original art form,...

Spanning nine decades and branded by the most trusted authority on film, Turner Classic Movies: Must-See Sci-Fi showcases 50 of the most shocking, weird, wonderful, and mind-bending movies ever made. From A Trip to the Moon (1902)to Arrival (2016), science fiction cinema has produced...

This excellent book ought to be in every library. -- Musical TimesWidely acclaimed for its scholarship, comprehensiveness, and originality, this superior study by a leading authority is considered the definitive work on woodwind instruments. Author Anthony Baines -- musicologist, conductor, instrumentalist, and curator of...

"There has never been a better book about hip-hop...a record-biz portrait that jumps off the page."--A.V. Club The perfect read for music lovers and business aficionados alike, The Big Payback reveals the secret histories of the early long-shot successes of Sugar Hill Records and...

This vivid celebration of blues and early rock 'n' roll includes some of the first and most illuminating profiles of such blues masters as Muddy Waters, Skip James, and Howlin' Wolf; excursions into the blues-based Memphis rock 'n' roll of Jerry Lee Lewis, Charlie...

Detroit Rock City is an oral history of Detroit and its music told by the people who were on the stage, in the clubs, the practice rooms, studios, and in the audience, blasting the music out and soaking it up, in every scene from...

A collection of interviews--some vintage, some recent, and some brand-new--Conversations with the Dead is the first (and only) book in which the Grateful Dead speak in their own words about their music and their lives. David Gans, a self-professed Deadhead and host of "The...

Chicago has always had a reputation as a "wide open town" with a high tolerance for gangsters, illegal liquor, and crooked politicians. It has also been the home for countless black musicians and the birthplace of a distinctly urban blues-more sophisticated, cynical, and street-smart...

From Adelaide in "Guys and Dolls" to Nina in "In the Heights" and Elphaba in "Wicked," female characters in Broadway musicals have belted and crooned their way into the American psyche. In this lively book, Stacy Wolf illuminates the women of American musical theatre...

With striking photographs and personal insight, a compelling biography of the great American saxophonist and free jazz innovator Ornette Coleman. Ornette Coleman's career encompassed the glory years of jazz and the American avant-garde. Born in segregated Fort Worth, Texas, during the Great Depression, the...

Nu Metal: A Definitive Guide revisits one of the most remarkable eras of heavy music, when mainstream charts, magazines, radio, and TV were all taken over by a host of diverse artists performing their own brands of hard rock and heavy metal. This book...

More than 40 years after her death, the legend of Maria Callas, "La Divina Assoluta," remains unsurpassed. Much has been written about her sensational opera career and fraught private life, from her definitive mastery of iconic opera roles to her love affairs and tantrums....

The social connotation of jazz in American popular culture has shifted dramatically since its emergence in the early twentieth century. Once considered youthful and even rebellious, jazz music is now a firmly established American artistic tradition. As jazz in American life has shifted, so...

Jay-Z and Kanye West's 2011 Watch the Throne is a self-avowed "luxury rap" album centered on Eurocentric conceptions of nobility, artistry, and haute couture. Critical Excess performs a close reading of the sonic and social commentary on this album, examining how the album alternately...

In 2018, ITV Studios and Reelz will release a documentary about the Supremes on which Peter Benjaminson will appearAlso in 2018, CNN will broadcast a four-part series about Detroit in 1963. Benjaminson will appear on the episode devoted to MotownMotown records will release its...

An eminently readable chronicle of the most popular jam band in history.Author: Stephen Thomas ErlewineISBN-10: 1617136514ISBN-13: 9781617136511Publisher: Backbeat BooksLanguage: EnglishPublished: 07/12/2019Pages: 400Format: PaperbackWeight: 1.40lbsSize: 9.00h x 6.00w x 1.00d

A stunning biography of "pure self-interest and cruelty, tempered only slightly by the great musical achievements of Mr. Spector's golden age in the early 1960s" (The New York Times). He had a number one hit at eighteen. He was a millionaire with his own...

Part memoir, part tribute, and all great storytelling ...Music industry veterans Robbie Robertson, Jim Guerinot, Jared Levine, and Sebastian Robertson invite young readers to share with them in celebrating twenty-seven musical legends. Short profiles chronicle personal stories and achievements of extraordinarily talented artists whose...

"Lexicon Devil is, pure and simple, the finest volume on punk to have seen the light of print. (Yes, folks: that includes Please Kill Me.) Great book!"--Richard MeltzerProduction has started on the documentary feature based on the book.Author: Brendan Mullen, Don Bolles, Adam ParfreyISBN-10:...

It has been more than thirty-five years since Jimi Hendrix died, but his music and spirit are still very much alive for his fans everywhere. Charles R. Cross vividly recounts the life of Hendrix, from his difficult childhood and adolescence in Seattle through his...

When Leo Fender added a bass to his growing family of instruments 50 years ago, he created a new world for musicians and revolutionized an industry in the process. Using hundreds of photographs, this exciting release chronicles the evolution of that instrument from 1951...

Ravel: Man and Musician is the first book to set the composer's entire oeuvre in its proper perspective ... a staggeringly well documented opus ... it cannot be matched for the invaluable particulars it provides. -- Patrick J. Smith, Editor, High Fidelity/Musical AmericaThe music...

An unflinching look at the rise of one of the most recognizable names in pop music -The Police The Police have sold more than 50 million albums, made Rolling Stone's Greatest Artists of All Time list, and finished a triumphant world reunion tour in...